Fishing Cap Needed To Save River Herring

The small, silvery river herring is unlikely to be on anyone's "favorite fish" list. But river herring are important to Connecticut's ecosystem; they are eaten by ospreys, otters, cormorants, and fish such as striped bass and bluefish. That's why for several years it has been illegal to catch river herring in any Connecticut waters, including Long Island Sound.

Despite the ban, and other state actions designed to increase the birth rate, the number of river herrings continues to diminish. According to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission, the count of river herrings is one-fifth what it was as recently as 1996, and in Connecticut, one variety of the fish is officially "depleted." More needs to be done to make sure the population isn't further reduced.

A substantial threat to our state's river herring population exists many miles from Connecticut, in the Atlantic Ocean: commercial herring trawlers. The giant trawlers are actually after Atlantic herring — a separate species — but the boats' huge nets, some as large as a football field, scoop up everything in their path, including seals, dolphins and tuna. Despite their name, river herrings spend most of their life in saltwater, returning to rivers only to spawn, and they frequently are found with Atlantic herring. They are often caught up in the nets.

Federal regulations cap the number of Atlantic herring these trawlers may collect, but no such cap exists for river herring. The New England Fishery Management Council, at its recent meeting in Maine, voted in favor of a river herring cap and a requirement that federal observers, paid for by the commercial fishers, be on each trawler to monitor the catch.

Those were prudent and necessary moves. Unfortunately, at the meeting a representative of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration raised several objections to the immediate implementation of a cap. The Fishery Management Council must now jump through several more hoops to get the limits in place.

The sooner the council can do that, the better. It's an environmental axiom that all species are interdependent, and for Connecticut, the river herring shows just how true that precept is.